#573 Twinkle Star Sprites Hidden Characters (1/4): Memory gameplay.
0Gameplay of the final boss and hidden character Memory in ADK's Twinkle Star Sprites.
To play as Memory in this game: Highlight Load-Ran at the character select screen and press Down, Down, Down, Down, and A. (Courtesy of Alex Cross of Gamefaqs).
I'm surprised it took me so long to get to this. Twinkle Star Sprites is a cult classic Neo Geo game, admired probably for being one of the best non-fighting games on the system (though it of course still has a competitive element). The game is a sort of shmup fighting game, whereby players pick from a number of characters, and rack up combos against enemies which appear from above. The bigger the combo, the more projectiles are then sent over to their opponent's side. A huge combo, the right time, can even see the opponent's projectiles being absorbed into the player's combo, and sent right back at them. If the combo reaches a certain level, it will also see a "boss attack" occur, a special attack which deals signficantly more than a regular attack, and which attacks in an inregular pattern. The character to lose all their hearts first loses, and while regular enemies can damage a player, they will never defeat them. A player can only be defeated by an attack from their opponent.
What's more, after being hit by an attack, the player sees a temporarily decrease in power, seeing their movement speed and and attack power decreased for a short while. This seemed like an odd and unbalanced choice to me, but it never really affected the game too much in my experience I suppose I can let it slide.
The game also features four hidden characters from its story mode; three bosses, and a powered up version of Ran called Sprites. What's more, all hidden characters are regularly accessible with an easy to use code, which certainly makes a difference for most Neo Geo games.
Memory is the final boss of the game, and is Ran's mother under the control of the sub-boss of the game, the nefarious Mevious. When played as, she for some reason has this insatiable desire for food, which is also reflected in the fact that her boss attack is a birthday cake (which the name of the developer of the game, ADK, on top of it, I might add). Despite supposedly having different stats and abilities, I never noticed them making much of a difference. Memory is supposed to be the strongest character in the game, as you'd expect from the final boss, but still I didn't notice anything too special about her compared to the other characters. Still, it's nice to have four fully playable, easily accessible characters in a game such as this, which has a relatively limited roster in the first place.